Last week saw the release of two Balance Board-compatible WiiWare puzzlers: Tetris Party and The Incredible Maze. Thanks to brand recognition, the former needs no selling, so let's take a look at The Incredible Maze (there are some who call it… TIM), published by Digital Leisure, a company better known for their re-re-releases of laser disc games Dragon's Lair and Space Ace.

Labyrinth, the old wooden toy (the kind we had when I was a kid, back before everything needed batteries!), is defined in Wikipedia as a game "where the object is to try to tilt the playing field to guide a marble to the end of a maze, without letting it fall into any of the holes." And that's exactly what TIM is. Rather than control the ball itself, as in Super Monkey Ball, players tilt the playing surface. It's a minor, but important, distinction. TIM has 30 mazes, which may not seem like much, but it's about right for the $5 it costs to download. Early levels follow a single path from beginning to end, while others are true mazes. Fortunately, the camera can be pulled back for a broader view of the playing scape, then drawn back in for finer detail and control.

The basic gameplay puts you at one end of the maze with the exit at the other. Falling through any one of the many holes increments an "attempts" counter before replacing you on the board near where you fell. I don't mean to say this game needs to be harder, but it seems a trivial penalty for falling through a hole. No matter how many times you fall through a hole, you can continue on your merry way. It rather lessens the motivation for a flawless run.

Collect all the gems in TIM's Challenge Mode.

By contrast, I have the opposite complaint for Challenge Mode, which is unlocked after you finish the regular board. In Challenge Mode, you are required to collect gems scattered about the course before making your way to the exit. Should you fall through a hole, your and the gems' positions in the maze are returned to their original positions. The titular challenge then becomes not just to collect all the gems as quickly as possible, but to do so without dying once. Though it's a bit extreme, I can allow it… so why can't the game? Every time you die and are returned to the maze's entrance, it's like starting anew, right? Yet though your trial is reset, the timer is not. To get a truly low score, you need to complete the maze on your first and only try. If you fail, your next step should be to call up the menu and choose to restart. Even doing that is a pain, as menu navigation requires pointing the Wiimote at the screen, even though gameplay is performed with the Wiimote held sideways. Why not let the D-pad be used for selecting menu items?

That's just the tip of the game's control issues. Tilting the Wiimote to tilt the board is a logical correlation, but the sensitivity is off the chart. The slightest nudge in any direction sends the ball careening around the board when what you need is to gingerly edge your way past the pits. I thought I was supposed to be battling the game, not its controls, but apparently I need to keep an eye on both. The only setup that brought me success was to perch my elbows on my knees and hold the Wiimote at eye level, carefully monitoring both its and the game board's movements and the synchronization between the two. Fun? Not really.

It gets trickier. A flick of the Wiimote launches the ball into the air — a necessary maneuver to jump over some dead ends or to take shortcuts. It's not apparent which walls can be jumped over, or if the height of the jump is determined by the severity of the flick. Since controlling the board's tilt is already too sensitive, adding the jumping maneuver to the Wiimote's motion-sensing portfolio is unnecessarily complicated.

You'd think, given this extreme sensitivity, that The Incredible Maze's invitation to play using the Balance Board would be sadistic. Surprisingly, the game's control is much finer with this Wii Fit accessory. I found myself able to move the ball more slowly and accurately around the maze and its pitfalls, making me wonder if a calibration option was intended for the Wiimote but simply overlooked. After watching the ball imitate Sonic bouncing off the walls with the Wiimote, the Balance Board was a nice change.

Unfortunately, in the end, this $90 peripheral isn't enough to save TIM. When a new retail game can cost up to $60, having more affordable alternatives available for immediate download is a relief. Expectations should be appropriately scaled for a $5 game like TIM, but I think it's fair to expect the controls to work. Designing a successful game can be a labyrinthine challenge, but if there's one thing the Wii has taught us, it's that gamers will buy a game with mediocre graphics and great gameplay, while great graphics and mediocre gameplay won't go far.

After reading my reasons to buy an Xbox 360, you should've seen this coming: I finally ordered myself an Xbox 360. It was the holiday bundle, coupled with a 15% (or $45) off coupon (hat tip to ChatterBox), that finally did me in.

But the arrival of this new hardware will put me in an awkward position. I have 50 games for the original Xbox, and though it was the previous-generation console I played the least, I always figured I'd go back and start or finish some of its games. That's where backward compatibility comes in. Unlike the Nintendo Wii which has GameCube hardware, ensuring 100% of old games will work on the new console, the Xbox 360 must be coded for each of its predecessor's individual titles. That list stopped evolving in November 2007, two years after the console's launch. I went through my personal gaming library to see which were on the list. These 24 titles were:

Armed and Dangerous Darkwatch Dead to Rights Genma Onimusha Jet Set Radio Future NBA 2K3 NCAA College Basketball 2K3 NFL 2K2 NFL 2K3 NFL Blitz 2002 NHL 2K3 Panzer Dragoon Orta

Pitfall: The Lost Expedition Sega GT 2002 Sega GT Online Sega Soccer Slam Shenmue II Shrek Super Party Sonic Heroes Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Street Fighter Anniversary Collection World Series Baseball Wrath Unleashed

I'm reassured by some notable games on the list, such as Panzer Dragoon Orta and Shenmue II, but there are also a lot of sports games that I care nothing for.

Here are the 26 games that won't work:

Arctic Thunder Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance Capcom Anniversary Collection Capcom Classics Collection Capcom Fighting Evolution Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller Dino Crisis 3 Gladius Group S Challenge Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance

MTX Mototrax NBA 2K2 NCAA College Football 2K3 NHL Hitz 2002 Otogi: Myth of Demons Prince of Persia: Warrior Within Prisoner of War Pro Cast Sports Fishing Silent Scope Complete Spy Hunter Star Wars: The Clone Wars Tenchu: Return from Darkness Terminator, The: Dawn of Fate

There are some significant games on that list! Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance? Lord of the Rings? Some of them are multiplatform titles, but it's the original Xbox versions I own. And I'm not going to download them as Xbox Originals. (Buying games I already own is reserved strictly for the Virtual Console)

There's no room in my entertainment center for two Xboxes, so I've little choice but to forsake more than half of my original Xbox software library in favor of the newer console. In reality, I'd probaby never go back to those older games anyway, and I know that even 52% backward compatibility is better than what I had when adding the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and GameCube to my setup. But it's still frustrating for a retrocomputing enthusiast such as myself to leave history behind in the name of progress.

Not every great game that is released in Japan is translated into English.  But some of these great games are eventually made available in English, courtesy fan translation patches — game hacks that transform the original Japanese game into a fully playable English version.  Most fan translations never get finished, as it takes a lot of time and skill to completely translate a game. When a quality one is finished, it's cause for great celebration.  This week marks the completion of not one, not two, but three high profile fan translation patches.

The first of these patches is a translation patch for Persona 2: Innocent Sin.  Persona 2's story was divided into two separate games, and the US officially got only the second part, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.  Although Eternal Punishment summarized most of the essential information about the first part, it should be fun to find out the details.

The second of this week's patches is for Mother 3.  The Mother series may be unfamiliar to most Western gamers by its native title, but the second game was released for the Super Nintendo as Earthbound (whose protagonist, Ness, appears in Super Smash Bros.).  Though the gameplay tends toward typical Dragon Quest-style, the plot and setting are anything but standard.  The games generally take place in the modern world and parody the RPG genre.  Earthbound (Mother 2) is thus far the only one to officially make it Stateside. The original Mother was a Famicom game that Nintendo of America translated, but never released, for the NES. Mother 3, supposedly the best in the series, was also never released in the USA — probably because it was a GBA game released at a time when Nintendo was focusing on the DS in the US.  I'm really looking forward to giving Mother 2 a try, as the world needs more parody RPGs. (Earthbound and Okage: Shadow King aren't enough!)

The last of these patches is a translation patch for the Super Famicom game Lennus II.  Like Mother, we've gotten a previous game in the series in the US here under a different name, that being Paladin's Quest for Super Nintendo.  That title proved something of a misnomer, since the game is completely devoid of any paladins; the hero and heroine are both wizards. I suspect Enix wanted a name that gamers would identify as an RPG.  The first game was known for a very cool magic system: instead of having one overall magic stat, you have one stat for each of several fields of magic, and you increase each field through practice. There were also 30 different playable characters (two main characters and 28 mercenaries you could hire at various parts of the game), bizarre pastel-based graphics, and great level design.  Despite being a SNES RPG published by Enix, it was pretty obscure — sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who has ever played the thing.  I hear the sequel is even better than the first game so I'm really looking forward to playing it in a language I can understand.

These patches are applicable only via emulation, which is a legally gray area. Neither I nor Gamebits nor its affiliated parties offer any endorsements of methods or practices. It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

It's no secret that gamers have good hearts; just look at the impact of Penny Arcade's Child's Play. Thanks to the Internet, geeks globally can assemble to perform these good works more easily than ever. Even Iron Man recently threw his hat (helmet?) into the ring to fight cancer.

Now it's your turn to do a good deed, play some good games, and have it not cost you a cent. Just sign up for Extra Life, a Sarcastic Gamer community effort. The process is simple:

1) Sign up — either as an individual or as part of an existing team.

2) Get your friends, family, and co-workers to pledge. It can be a flat amount or a per-hour. The minimum goal is $96 total. All proceeds benefit the Texas Children's Cancer Center at Texas Children's Hospital.

3) Play video games for 24 hours straight on October 18th. Some charities challenge their participants' endurance with marathons or see-saw-a-thons; your sacrifice will be an entire day of wakeful gaming. Besides helping kids in Texas, top fundraisers are also eligible for fantastic prizes.

If you want to participate in Extra Life, take this advice: form a team. Staying awake for 24 hours is painful enough without teammates to cheer you on. And solo gaming can be pretty tedious after awhile. But get three friends together for Bomberman Blast or Halo 3, and suddenly you won't know where the time has gone.

So let's all pitch in to give kids an extra life. And if anyone does sign up, please let me know about any help your team could use.

A reader of my weekly newspaper column once praised me for giving due coverage to non-mainstream games, though I never considered it a great difficulty to do so. The world doesn't need another review of Grand Theft Auto, not when games like Everblue 2 and Disaster Report may otherwise go unnoticed. Coincidentally, both those games have real-world settings with no hint of magic or mysticism. Instead, players take control of everyday heroes with the fantastic powers of scuba-diving or photography. I don't know why this form of escapism isn't more popular, but I'm glad to see these two games getting sequels.

Everblue 2 was one of my favorite PS2 games. Its score of 8.3 suggests it doesn't have the jaw-dropping impact of a more mainstream title, but it did have the staying power that kept me playing through to the end — a rare quality these days. Unfortunately, its 2008 sequel for the Wii, Endless Ocean, stripped the franchise of its stickier qualities, leaving me disenchanted.

Conversely, Disaster Report had unrealized potential which its sequel may fulfill. The first game suffered from pacing, control, and graphical issues, barring many gamers from the variety of challenging situations the game offered. Its sequel, Disaster: Day of Crisis, may suffer from corny dialogue, but the various trailers I've seen suggest ready access to a breadth and depth of activities. As a prologue to that, here's the game's first few minutes:

Is it a coincidence that both Everblue 2 and Disaster Report, originally PlayStation 2 games, are getting their sequels on the Wii? Is there something about Nintendo's platform that's inherently friendlier to niche or offbeat titles? Regardless, I'm hoping when it finally releases sometime in 2009 that this new Disaster is not the same disaster the old Disaster was.

(Hat tip to Nintendo Wii Fanboy)